Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The Candidates' Baseball Bonafides

Some say baseball and politics don't mix. But for as long as there has been baseball, there have been politicians seeking to exploit it. This exploitation usually takes the form of candidates cloaking themselves in the glorious Americana that is our national pastime, and trying desperately to ride those coattails to higher poll numbers. More recently it has involved piling on baseball when it has faced challenges like steroids, labor difficulties, and the like in an effort to appear to be fighting for the rights of the common fan.

Neither dynamic is stopping anytime soon, and as the playoff races heat up, we can expect to see more and more baseball photo-ops and sound bytes from the seventeen ambitious folks who have declared (or in Fred Thompson's case have all but declared) their candidacy for the office of First Fan.

I was curious to see how the field stacked up baseball-wise, so I spent several hours with a bottle of bourbon and my trusty laptop trying to Google my way to the truth. Who do these people root for? What is their record when it comes to the national pastime? What, if anything, do their baseball bonafides say about what kind of president they'd make?

What follows represents my best effort at answering those questions, setting aside (for the most part anyway) my own political leanings and my personal feelings about each of these folks. For purposes of this exercise I am a monomaniacal, single-issue voter, and that issue is baseball.

The Republicans

Sam Brownback

Declared rooting interest: I couldn't find any reference to one, though given that he's from eastern Kansas and came of age in the late 60s and early 70s, I'd guess he's more likely to be into the Royals than the A's.

Analysis: While I'd prefer that the person who has his finger on the button be a somewhat bigger baseball fan than Brownback's record seems to indicate (both pursuits require patience and an appreciation of history that brings greater perspective to one's thinking), I'd still prefer a president who is a casual or non-fan to one who is a pandering, phony fan, and Brownback doesn't appear to be the latter. In addition to being nice, the hat-tips to O'Neil appear genuine as well given that, as a politician from Kansas, Brownback has never had a need to pander to either Missiouri residents or, let's face it, black people simply to win votes.

Analysis: Rudy may or may not be the biggest baseball fan in the pool, but he's certainly the most conspicuous. Like many of the other candidates (see Clinton and Richardson), his embrace of baseball has caused controversy, though he is probably the only one who could wind up being investigated over it (how much did you pay for those WS rings, Rudy?). The biggest baseball issue for him, however, may be the fact that he's a Yankees' fan, which, among discriminating baseball fans, makes him even more of a polarizing figure than Brownback.

Mike Huckabee

Declared rooting interest: Nothing could be found. By geography he's likely to be a Cardinal or Braves fan, but my personal history (Braves fan from West Virginia) has taught me that it's a fool's game to predict such things in a baseball no-man's-land like Arkansas.

Analysis: As a baseball fan, Huckabee appears to be a non-entity. He lost over 100 pounds a couple of years back and has since become an avid runner. Guys like that tend not to enjoy sitting on the couch for three hours flipping between the Cardinals-Cubs and the Yankees-Angels.

Duncan Hunter

Declared rooting interest: Before we get there, allow me to inform you that Duncan Hunter is a Congressman from San Diego. No I did not know that, nor did I know until now that he was running for president. Anyway, Hunter appears to be a Padres fan, though I couldn't find anything definitive about it anywhere.

Analysis: I am certain of two things in this world: (1) the fish tacos in San Diego -- even at chain places like Rubio's -- are better than New York cheesecake; and (2) in 1998, no one with a lick of sense was picking the Padres to beat the Yankees in the World Series. What this tells me is that Hunter, as president, would be inclined to risk too much for lost causes. Troubling.

Analysis: One's support of McCain may very well depend on how one feels about the government regulating big-time sports. If elected, he may very well eliminate the DH, raise the mound, and declare Tony La Russa an enemy combatant. Not that any of those would be bad things.

Ron Paul

Declared rooting interest: Though a congressman from Texas, he grew up, went to college, and spent his medical residency in the Pittsburgh area, where, as a youth, he claims to have delivered milk to Honus Wagner. In light of that, if he isn't a Pirates fan he has a lot of 'splainin' to do.

Analysis: Given his strong-libertarian leanings, one assumes that Paul would be the anti-McCain when it comes to mixing politics and sports. I suppose he'd probably have a lot of bad things to say about publicly-funded baseball stadiums too. There simply isn't much else to be found online about Paul and baseball. That may be because a third of the internet's aggregate bandwidth seems to have been used up by Paul supporters talking about how no one ever talks about Ron Paul.

Analysis: Given his inconsistent stance on other issues, I wouldn't be surprised to see a President Romney wearing a Devil Rays jersey if the polling dictated he should. I am nowhere near as fanatical about sports bigamy as Bill Simmons is, but Romney has not shown that he is entitled to the benefit of the doubt on this score.

Tom Tancredo

Declared rooting interest: Colorado Rockies (at least if the Rockies giving Tancredo's staff free tickets qualifies as a rooting relationship), but given his zealous anti-immigration positions, he probably has a place in his heart for the Yankees or the White Sox, with an emphasis on the White.

Record:Used baseball as a springboard for a foreign policy broadside against China. Not much else, really, though I'm guessing that he has a few things to add about the prevalence of ballplayers from Latin America on major league rosters.

Analysis: Though he will never win the nomination, the prospect of a Trancredo presidency is terrifying for baseball fans due to the fact that if the Rockies don't win the NL West, the sumbitch may very well bomb Phoenix.

Fred Thompson

Declared rooting interest: None that I could find, but then again, he's not very big on declaring. Born in Alabama, raised in Tennessee, but a longtime inside-the-beltway resident, he may be a Cardinals, Braves, or Nationals fan. As with everything else, Thompson the baseball fan seems to be an inkblot test in which we all see that we want to see.

Analysis: About as weak a baseball record as any candidate in the field. If I was a one-issue voter and that issue was baseball, Fred would not be getting my support. He's not getting my support anyway, but that's neither here nor there.

The Democrats

Joe Biden

Declared rooting interest: According to Biden's MySpace page, he's a member of the "Phillies Phans" group. Not sure if the page is legit or not, but given that he was born in Scranton and has lived all of his adult life in Delaware, I'd be surprised if that wasn't true.

Analysis: Along with McCain, Biden has been the most vocal of all of the candidates when it comes to steroids in baseball. Unlike McCain, Biden seems to have spent more time actually doing stuff like writing laws to make them illegal and writing op-eds about their health risks as opposed to simply rattling his saber at Major League Baseball. The most troubling thing about a President Biden: the awkwardness that will ensue when he ends his inaugural address by saying "today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."

Analysis: The whole Cubs-Yankees rooting thing overshadows all other baseball issues on Clinton's plate. Until she can clearly establish that she was, in fact, a Yankees fan as well as a Cubs fan as a child, anything she says about baseball will be forever suspect.

Record: Is a close, personal friend of Bud Selig's, and took the time to praise Selig, at length, on the Senate floor when he was named permanent commissioner. Spoke at length about sports in a recent interview with Deadspin, where he revealed that that he spent time in the Dominican Republic while in the Peace Corps (contrary to popular belief, he managed to walk off the island); is against the embargo against Cuba and can rattle off the names of Cuban ballplayers like Yuniesky Betancourt, Livan Hernandez or Danys Baez without prompting. Was at the corn boil.

Analysis: One gets the sense that Dodd knows his stuff when it comes to baseball. Probably vulnerable on steroids inasmuch as he is officially on record as being a huge fan of the 1998 chase of Roger Maris, the home run boom, and basically everything else Selig has ever done as commissioner. As a Democrat, maybe even more vulnerable over the fact that his dear, personal friend Mr. Selig has chosen Ari Fleischer as his political adviser as opposed to a someone in the donkey party. If your bestest buddy in the whole world doesn't seek your counsel, why should the American public trust you?

John Edwards

Declared rooting interest: I couldn't find one. Something called the Presidential Brands Study says "if we have to pick a baseball team for Edwards, it would probably be the pre-2004 Boston Red Sox – a bit of hard luck story with a lot of nostalgic appeal." I imagine that the inferiority complex and the obnoxious supporters is simply assumed.

Analysis: Like Thompson, a thin record, though he has not shied away from liking the pale hose. Given his willingness to negotiate with Iran and Syria, he may be called upon one day to try and talk to Scott Boras, though I'd hope he'd warm up with the dictators first. You know, to ease into things.

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